360 Real Estate Photography Tutorial – free course part 1

 

360 Real Estate Photography Tutorial – free course part 1

The best tricks and tips on 360 Real Estate photography using one click cameras. NOT DSLR.

In these series of 4 videos I will give you the best advise and tricks on how to shoot and create 360 Virtual Tours of Real Estate using Virtual Tours Creator.

The series includes:

• 360 camera tripod set up
• 360 camera positioning in virtual tours of properties and 360 photography
• properly point and direct the 360 camera and lenses
• exposure settings on a 360 camera
• avoid the stitch line in 360 photos
• preparing lighting inside of the house for 360 photos
• hallway photography and camera placement in property virtual tours
• kitchen, bedroom, living, outside house 360 photography
• obstacle avoidance in 360 virtual tours
• proper hot spots placement in 3D virtual tours of real estate
• photographing windows and mirrors in vr tours
• adjust and set up exposure and ISO

Please remember the advice I provide is based on creating the tours in the free Virtual Tours Creator software, so some tips may not apply to other 360 providers.

 

This is the ultimate guide on how to create 3D virtual  tour of a house, part 1

There is plenty of different advice on the internet, but if you are interested in Real estate and Real estate only, this is the tutorial that you want to see. We focus only on real estate. I’ve done probably a hundred or more virtual reality tours myself. If you’re shooting with one click cameras, not DSLR, this is the tutorial for you. This is what you want to hear and this is what is gonna give you, I hope, all the knowledge that I have.

 

1. Let’s start is setting up the tripod.

• The height of the tripod, the height of the camera should probably be somewhere between your belly button and your chest. No higher than that. That’s for real estate.
• The tripod legs shouldn’t be further away from each other than one foot. And that’s gonna allow us not to have any tripod in our photos when we look down at the ground. Although when it’s windy like today, I wouldn’t take the risk of the tripod falling over, so I would go really wide. And I wouldn’t worry about the tripod being visible in the photos.
• We have to level the camera. We have a little leveling bubble on our tripods that we supply with the starter kits from virtual tours creator and that allows you to just money wally adjust the leveling.

Some of you are asking why not use monopod, because it leaves a small footprint. When you’re gonna go and shoot a house that’s on a slope, or it’s really windy, the monopod is not gonna cut it. You’re gonna have to carry some weights with you. So you’re safer with getting a tripod.

2. Taking our first 360 outdoor photo with a 360 camera

• The most important thing that I want you to remember is the stitch line, that’s created by the place where both of the lenses of the camera connect. And it’s usually along the edge of the camera and the first rule that you have to remember, is always point the edge of the camera, towards the strongest source of light. And what that means outside, it’s usually the sun. You can’t see the sun now, but I’ll show you it on a photo in a second and you can see that when we point the camera directly into the sun, there’s no line, you can’t see any line, but if we had the camera facing one lens towards the sun, this side of the lens will get more light. This one would get less and then you would get a line across half of your 360 photo, which would show that half of the photo is brighter half is darker. That’s why you always have to point the edge of the camera towards the strongest source of light. And I wanted to say that the easiest way to do it is to align the edge of the camera, with the shadow that you can see, but the sun just decided to hide behind the clouds. But I’ll show to you on a attached photo in this video.
• Another very important thing is the camera, even though it doesn’t have a front, it does, and as you can see there’s lights in front of the camera. These lights mean this is the front lens. And it only matters for our virtual tours creator solution, when you’re gonna want to share your virtual tour onto Facebook. Now, Facebook will only recognize the matter data from the photo and will put a preview of the photo that we choose as a Facebook cover. Now, if you’re not gonna have those slides, facing towards the house, and facing towards the other side of the street, people will see the neighbors’ house on the Facebook cover instead of seeing this beautiful house that we want to sell. So always remember, point the front of the camera towards the main point of interest, which is the house in this instance. Also a very important thing, coming back to the stitch line is, today we are lucky because the stitch line is just here, so we can have the whole house in one lens. And it’s very important for you guys to remember it because usually on the stitch line, the sharpness is lost a bit and that’s why you don’t want to point the edge of the camera somewhere in the middle of the house. Cause this will make it a bit blurry right in the middle. So remember about having the main point of interest in one of the lenses.
• One very important thing that I forgot to mention is obviously have the entrance to the house visible from the position where you take the photo of the outside of the house. So then you can naturally progress inside of the house from the outside, just simply by putting the hot spot on the door.
• Another very important thing that I want to show you, is the exposure. When you’re outside and the sun is really bright like now, as you can see on the screen, you want to dim it down a bit to get this nice color of the blue sky. So what you have to use is those three slide that’s up here. That give you the access to your exposure settings. And all you have to do is click on that icon and if the suns’ really strong, you have to dim it down, so let’s say, we’re gonna take it down to minus two and look what happens with the sky. It gets nice and blue and the clouds are not so bright. So we are taking down the over exposure of the sky, but you also have to be careful, because then the house, that is our main point of view might get a bit too dark, so this is the little game you have to play with the exposure, maybe minus one. Maybe we’re just gonna have to leave it at minus half. The choice is yours. This is the setting that you have to use.

We can now move inside of the house and start shooting next panorama. After coming from the street, we have to have one photo just of the entrance. I advise to have the door open, always. Anywhere you are, inside of the house, or outside and it’s as simple as that, put the camera in front of the door, open the door and take your photo.

READ PART 2

 

Virtual Tours Creator is a one stop shop for all your needs.

We will supply you with the one click 360 camera, tripod and software to create your tours.

But most importantly we will give you up to 2 hours of training and all day phone support so that your tours are perfect.

WE WILL ALWAYS BE HERE TO HOLD YOUR HAND.

If you would like to learn  more about how to create virtual tours yourself to improve engagement on your listings, schedule a 15 min information call below and we will call you exactly when you want to hear back from us.